No, that isn’t me talking about my wife. This is something I read on an investing forum once. It really troubled me when I read it, and has stayed in the back of my mind ever since.

Just recently it struck me what it was about the quote that was so jarring. It wasn’t that the sentiment was new. We’ve all seen men and women who act this way. And we’ve been hearing women say this for decades:

Marriage is forever.

Unless I get unhappy.

What was so jarring was to hear a man say it, in the way a man would say it.

My platoon sergeant while I was in the military once expressed a similar sentiment, but it was regarding tattoos. He felt that getting a tattoo with his wife’s name was foolish, since she could divorce him at any time; however no matter what happened he would still be his child’s father. Made sense to me.

The problem is, many people invest more in their children than their spouses, thinking the parenting relationship is permanent and the marriage isn’t. As a child of divorce, however, I feel less loyalty to my family of origin than I would if it was intact. I’m not sure where I read this quote but someone said, “Your marriage is much more than just a vehicle for your individual adult happiness.” Divorce destroys a family, and that is what is most painful to me, not just that my parents can’t manage to love each other.

D, I’m surprised that you are shocked by that, and I’m surprised that Badger wonders if the remark is sarcasm.

To a certain degree I think it’s normal to place kids, especially small and helpless kids, above a spouse. When our kids were still little, both my husband and I placed the boys above both ourselves and each other. (That’s changed as the kids grew up and learned to fend for themselves more.) It’s adaptive from an evolutionary standpoint to protect kids more than a spouse. Sadly, in the worst cases, even from a spouse.

I think what the guy was alluding to is diferent though and indicates some contempt for his wife. You are seeing it as backlash to decades of “Marriage is forever. Unless I get unhappy,” but I think it predates that era. For many reasons, some men simply have contempt for their wives or for women in general. Others just think saying that sort of stuff mkes them look hard. But, it’s nothing new or unusual.

[D: I don’t necessarily see it as a backlash. I’m saying it is the male equivalent of what women so often say.]

Well, when I was a child, I heard some old people say exactly that in my Southern European country. Their point of view is that blood is blood and you don’t share it with your spouse but you do with your kids.

These societies put a lot of value in “blood” (genetic relationships).

There was also an old song (I translate while losing the rhyme). It is about a man who tells his wife:

“I allow you anything except being rude with my mother. Because there is only one mother and you are someone I met in the street”

As my mother jokingly points out, women will feel that the kids belong to them because of pregnancy and child birth. In other words, they belong to her because they spent nine months inside of her and then eventually came out of her with some degree of pain. The role of the sperm is merely relegated to a minor quirk in the story.

I don’t feel that, DA. My children are very much my children. They are half mine genetically, and I am their father, a role I take with utmost seriousness. They seem to rather prefer me to my wife too. Men who let their wives take over the children are foolish, in my opinion

The paradoxical thing is… if the husband/father has truly felt estranged in this manner for a while (or, more importantly, if his wife has) there’s an increased chance the children he casually assumes are “family” may not be his family. Yikes!

Well, when I was a child, I heard some old people say exactly that in my Southern European country. Their point of view is that blood is blood and you don’t share it with your spouse but you do with your kids.

That’s a very Mediterrean mother-son thing. Even as a second generation AMerican, I feel the mom side of that relationaship very acutely and my sons are becoming very protective of me as they get older.

I think it’s normal to place kids, especially small and helpless kids, above a spouse. When our kids were still little, both my husband and I placed the boys above both ourselves and each other.

I appreciate the sentiment you’re attempting to expres, J, but there is a vast difference between putting an infant or toddler’s immediate physical needs above your spous’s or your own (that’s just good common sense parenting) and viewing them as more important than your spouse as a matter of perspective.

Side note: In our house, once a kid is aro undtwo, it becomes readily apparent to them that they are not the center of the universe.

Far too many women relegate their husbands to the back burner as soon as they become mothers. The more you do that, the easier it is for the idea that parenting is your most important role to take hold. It's easier to rationalize divorce when one has bought into the nonsensical notion that personal happiness 24/7 will makes you a better parent. People forget that the greatest gift they can give your kids is the stability of an intact family where they can thrive and grow as individuals. Additionally, parenting is a job I would never want to tackle alone!

Like David Collard, my husband never allowed himself to be pushed to the back burner as a dad, even when our kids were infants. I'm thankful for that, too. Mothers don't realize what they sacrifice when they try to be all things to their children. They were given two parents for a reason.

As for the text of the post in question, I am rather shocked that a man would say such a thing. It's unusual, but he probably learned such foolishness from his mother,🙂 . I can see why men would increasingly begin to think that way though, since everything form media, to the court systems and everything in between has caused marriage to be devalued so much many people view it as almost meaningless.

Well put Terry. If you care about your kids you will make your marriage a priority. In business we talk about the problem of focusing on the urgent over the important. I think this same concept applies.

appreciate the sentiment you’re attempting to expres, J, but there is a vast difference between putting an infant or toddler’s immediate physical needs above your spous’s or your own (that’s just good common sense parenting) and viewing them as more important than your spouse as a matter of perspective.

Then I think you understand what I was saying, and I agree that is not what the man in question was saying.

Side note: In our house, once a kid is around two, it becomes readily apparent to them that they are not the center of the universe.

I think there is no doubt that very young children need to the center of both parents’ attention, but that they need to be weaned off that feeling as they become more independent. Exactly when will vary from child to child, but kids need to begin learning some self-care as soon as they are developmentally able. It’s crippling not to teach them. A pre-teenager is old enough to start actively giving back to family and community. Kids who aren’t encouraged to give back become selfish and lack empathy.

I don’t think my husband ever felt “pushed to the backburner” by that because he shared that priority with me and was very hands-on with them, but I understand the point you’re making.

I am rather shocked that a man would say such a thing. It’s unusual, but he probably learned such foolishness from his mother, . I can see why men would increasingly begin to think that way though, since everything form media, to the court systems and everything in between has caused marriage to be devalued so much many people view it as almost meaningless.

I’m not shocked at all. It’s a real old country, “blood is thicker than water” sort of sentiment. The sort I grew up hearing long before the devaluation of marriage or easy divorce.

I don’t see why people are shocked that a man would say such a thing. Men end marriages, leave their wives, cheat on their wives–even though more women than men file for divorce, the women are often doing so because of such behaviors on the part of the man. This is what happened in my parents’ marriage, and was a big reason my own marriage was delayed–I had to make sure I had a man who would keep his vows.

I agree that men can be irresponsible, and that they too do cheat. But typically the culture doesn’t outright condone it. Like I said in the post we have seen men act this way, but not say it out loud the way women are too often perfectly comfortable doing.

Also, in all of the cases I’m aware of where someone we knew (directly or indirectly) experienced male infidelity the husband was a known player prior to the marriage. This doesn’t make him less responsible for his actions, but the women did or should have known what they were signing up for. My wife and I felt awful for one woman we know who’s husband cheated on her persistently. She had two sons with him and was reluctant to divorce for their sake. Then we learned that she had started off with him as the other woman. He cheated with her while married to another woman and left his previous wife and child to marry her. After we learned that we didn’t feel quite so bad for her.

We tell women it isn’t their fault if they fall for a player and marry him and he cheats because she was only following her heart. Bull. This sort of cruelty by kindness needs to stop. We don’t say that to men who marry sluts/strippers/hookers, and we shouldn’t say it to women who marry alphas/players.

“My platoon sergeant while I was in the military once expressed a similar sentiment, but it was regarding tattoos. He felt that getting a tattoo with his wife’s name was foolish, since she could divorce him at any time; however no matter what happened he would still be his child’s father. Made sense to me.”

Most of the guys I know who either have other tattoos or are considering it have said the very same thing.

I do not get what is supposed to be crass about this statement. Your children are your blood relatives, their mother/father is not. Just look at non-royal fathers/mothers of princes and princesses. They are just an appendage to the royal family.

I also tend to think that this is pretty normal. Children really *are* closer to you, in existential type of ways that are probably pretty hard-wired in our brains, than spouses are. Of course, as has been pointed out, if you treat your spouse that way after the kids are out of the very young stage, then your marriage will suffer for it, but the fact remains that the kids are closer to you, genetically, than your spouse is.

Well, yes, it is risky to marry a player. I would say that in my own parents’ marriage and probably many of their generation, this would be harder to discern beforehand. They married young for one thing–neither slept with anyone else. It’s easier for a 29 year old women to realize the guy is a player than for a 21 year old. Especially back in the 1960s when there was far less fear of divorce.

As an aside, as a woman, I never went looking for “players” or “alphas.” I simply dated people I was attracted to–no one told me that certain personality characteristics make a man risky. Almost all of them were Christians too, which was falsely reassuring. No woman wants to end up with a man who will cheat on her–but then, no one wants to end up in a loveless marriage either. It’s a balancing act for women–finding a man they are attracted to AND who is a genuinely good guy who will remain faithful no matter what.

@JulieWell, yes, it is risky to marry a player. I would say that in my own parents’ marriage and probably many of their generation, this would be harder to discern beforehand. They married young for one thing–neither slept with anyone else. It’s easier for a 29 year old women to realize the guy is a player than for a 21 year old. Especially back in the 1960s when there was far less fear of divorce.

I’m stumped on the question of if this would have been harder to determine in the past. Expectations were stricter, which would have given a woman less data to work with (players had to be more subtle) but a better frame to process the data she had.

But either way my point isn’t to blame your folks or anyone else. What I’m saying is it is dangerous (and cruel) to tell women that it isn’t their fault if they pick a player. They want to pick a player (many of them at least). Since they want to do it, they are strongly tempted to rationalize it. If they only harmed themselves by doing this I would say ok, but I’m not going to work up a great deal of sympathy when/if it goes wrong (but the man is still responsible for his own moral choices). However often marriage involves children so in those cases the harm falls on innocents as well.

The ideal solution would be if we could convincingly tell those who haven’t married yet that they are responsible for their choices without making those who already made poor choices feel worse about them than they already do. But if forced to choose, I personally will choose preventing further misery over condoning past bad choices.

No woman wants to end up with a man who will cheat on her–but then, no one wants to end up in a loveless marriage either. It’s a balancing act for women–finding a man they are attracted to AND who is a genuinely good guy who will remain faithful no matter what.

I don’t think this is how you mean it, but I am always troubled by the passive term of “ending up in a loveless marriage”. I should run for president and make my platform to allow women to choose who they want to marry. It would be a revolution. 🙂

But to your larger point, as I see it women have the following choices:

1) Marry an alpha player they are attracted to and accept that he will cheat or rationalize the choice as someone else’s fault when he does cheat. Complain about being trapped in a bad marriage.
2) Marry a beta (ideally greater beta) they are head over heels in love with and follow the feminist script to make him as unattractive to her as possible. Then complain about being trapped in a loveless marriage.
3) Marry a beta (ideally greater beta) they are head over heels in love with and not follow the feminist script (keeping him attractive in her eyes). Be happy. Live a good life.
4) Marry a beta they aren’t in love with and then complain about being “trapped” in a loveless marriage.
5) Not marry if they can’t find a solution they will be happy with.

So it is a balancing act as you describe, but one which women must approach with a sense of responsibility for the nature of the outcome (as should men). I’ve explored much of this in the posts which are tagged Finding a Spouse (I just added a feature to view posts by category).

Interesting choices. Now that I am a happily married thirty-something, they make a lot of sense. As a college woman, this was not clearcut to me AT ALL. I did not understand alpha/beta for one. I just knew I was attracted to some men and not to others. Yes, the men I was attracted to were more likely to have dated in the past or have a sexual history, but that only makes sense. My dating choices got progressively better as my relationships didn’t work out–but I still tended to be drawn to immature guys. This didn’t change until my mid-twenties when I began to feel genuine attraction to guys who had obvious maturity and good character. Were they alphas or betas–probably alphas, in terms of their options–I believe the two I crushed on the most are still single in their early 40s. Alpha/beta can be a bit trickier to discern in the Christian world because many alphas of any spiritual maturity do not take advantage of their options. I would say my husband is probably a greater beta on your scale–a fairly good-looking one as well. And still, it felt strange starting to date him–I did not fall for him immediately, and it felt far more comfortable than I was used to. A very good thing, which I was able to recognize at that point, but I doubt I would have given myself the chance to fall in love with someone like him when I was younger.

As for my past boyfriends, the one who cheated on me now seems to be faithfully and happily married with kids. Another immature one now seems to be a mature and faithful father with kids. Two are divorced. When I dated them, they seemed to all be cut from similar cloth, but their life/marriage choices would not have been easy to predict.
[D: All good points. And as for Alpha vs Beta, I hadn’t seen the terms until maybe a year ago.]

Can’t one make the argument towards the opposite? You children are ‘yours’ up until high school- then they really start to become independent and make their own lives. Once they are adults they will never be a part of your day to day life like your husband/wife is. That is the person you will spend the most time so it is best to not neglect them.

I think both of you are working off of some assumptions about love that are strong in Western culture but don’t necessarily make people happy. Americans, to a far greater degree than anyone else in the world, love romance–and what is romance really but sexual attraction? I’m not so foolish as to deny the power of sexual attraction, but the assumption that the person who most (to use Roissy-speak) chubs you out or makes you tingle is the person with whom you can be happiest for the rest of your life just doesn’t work. For women, the sometimes long process of unlearning that foolish notion is a large part of what the manosphere views as carousel riding. While I feel that there are far fewer carousel riders than the manosphere believes, I think that many young women meet alpha tingle providers, feel the intense emotions that the our culture TELLS them is real love and then act on it in the belief that they have found the Holy Grail of romance. It often takes a hurt or two before the sensible Amandas (from HUS, rememeber?) learn to distunguish tingles from love. The true neurotics take a lifetime.

Julie asks how a woman can avoid being taken advantage of while still following her tingle so as not to end up in a loveless marriage. The men of the manosphere try to learn game, so they can outsmart and not be “betaized” by the women who give them the biggest chubs. Dalrock advises finding a “greater beta” to “fall head over heels in love with” and then to not “follow the feminist script” so that the man can stay attractive in the woman’s eyes. No one advises looking at members of the opposite sex for character.

My first post to CR advised a male poster to check out a woman’s character before following one’s chub. (I was immediately jumped on, asked to prove I had not ridden the carousel, and accused of being the sort of mother who would welcome a slut into her son’s life with a cry of “You go, girl!” BUT I’m still holding to the notion of not blindly following your chub or tingle into the abyss if you aren’t dealing with a person of good character.

I have to tell you Dalrock that I cringe whenever I have you advise being “head over heels in love.” Perhaps it the choice of language, as I myself married a guy who by manophere standards is that “greater beta/lesser alpha/alpha leader of men but no philanderer” kind of guy you are talking about. And I was “head over heels” when I met him. BUT–and it’s a huge BUT–before I gave myself permission to be head over heels, I checked out his character and that came to overshadow the tingles rather quickly. In fact, had he turned out to be a man of lesser character than I thought he was, it would have been a huge tingle-killer. Handsome is as handsome does. (Lucky for me, he does handsomely, and I still tingle.)

D, you often point out that I have a big soft spot in my heart for young women. I do; I’m a former woman. But as an old mom, let me give you a tip about raising a daughter. If you want your daughter to be happy (and I know you do), worry less about what the manosphere perceives as the feminist script and go back to the good, old fashion value of character first. It’s often harder to find a great-looking person of good character than the converse, but male or female we should all look for character first. The rest falls into place.

This is the same advice BTW that I give my sons. I try to steer my boys into social situations that attract young women of good character, often from families we know and have regard for. I assume they’ll pick the “hottest” girls out of that pool, but, as the mother of my grandchildren, I prefer a decent girl who will share values with my sons to the hottest girl at the club.

BTW, SW quotes a beautiful piece on character from VJ at HUS. Well worth reading.

I do agree with you about character, for both sexes. As I’ve said before it is your sacred duty to your future children to get this right. Admittedly I do a better job of warning men about this than women, but it doesn’t mean I don’t agree that it applies to both. The legal risks are greater for men, but the risks to the children apply either way.

As for love, I think the problem is far too many people (especially women) get it backwards. They will marry when not in love, and divorce if the feel love is lacking. They should instead only marry if truly in love, but not feel entitled to always feeling this way when married. Hopefully they will, but this sense of entitlement is a problem in my view, and ironically leads for several reasons to falling out of love. Quite a paradox.

And as you said, wait until character is defined until falling in love to avoid heart ache.

Good advice about character–my mistake was in assuming that a man who was a Christian automatically had character. I could have used a lot more guidance from my parents and my church. The message from the church was “Only date Christians–don’t have sex before marriage.” My parents didn’t help–my mother had never had a successful relationship herself–my father (an excellent father) was an alpha male himself who was a bad husband and didn’t do much to steer me toward men of character.

The problem is that for many women, it is hard to fall “head over heels in love” with a beta–yes, you CAN fall in love with a beta, but it will usually not be immediate, and it may never be to the same level it would have been with a faithful alpha. Women need to be educated about this early–to be realistic about what is possible, especially for women who are of average attractiveness.

You are exactly right. Kids require a lot of attention when they are young and less immediate attention as they get older.

A story: When my kids were toddlers, my cousin, who never had kids, came to visit. My husband called from work, and my cousin could hear my end of the conversation. The first part of the conversation concerned the kids, then my husband asked how I was. When I got off the phone, my cousin, who had the sort of all consuming relationship with her husband that infertile couples often have, was appalled that my husband asked about the kids first. I shrugged my shoulders and said that I would do the same if he were home with the kids and I were out.

Flash forward to the present. The boys are teenagers and are often not even home when my husband comes in. When my husband walks in the door, he calls out, “J, I’m home.” He hugs and kisses me and THEN asks if the boys are home. If they’re not, he cops a feel. If they are home, he grumbles because he can’t cop a feel and then goes and calls to the boys.

BTW, yesterday I posted a responses about aging, looks, Brad and Angie to you on another thread (Rationalization Hamster 500?) Sorry to be so late in replying. I had some medical tests last week that required an anesthetic, so I didn’t see your posts when they were new.

my mistake was in assuming that a man who was a Christian automatically had character.

An easy mistake to make. While I think the odds of people finding a compatible spouse in the church, synagogue or mosque of their choice are greater than finding someone in a bar, church ain’t no guarantee.

I could have used a lot more guidance from my parents and my church.

Ditto. I don’t know why, but even smart people find character first a hard concept to grasp. When I was in my teens, my mom asked me if I had any questions about sex. I told her that I probably knew more about the mechanics from my biology class than she did, but I didn’t understand the emotional part. She told me that when I met the right guy “bells would ring.” What stupid advice!! I’d have probably taken fewer emotional kicks to the teeth had she just said, “I don’t know.”

my father (an excellent father) was an alpha male himself who was a bad husband and didn’t do much to steer me toward men of character.

Mine too. A man has to actually be a man of character to steer you towards one.

The problem is that for many women, it is hard to fall “head over heels in love” with a beta–yes, you CAN fall in love with a beta, but it will usually not be immediate, and it may never be to the same level it would have been with a faithful alpha.

You can’t confuse a true and lasting love with being “head over heels in love.” The sort of love that is based on the alpha tingle wears off eventually. Even if you are lucky enough to get the biologically based three or four years of euphoric love out of an “alpha,” you will wake up one morning when the oxytocin high wears off and ask yourself, “Who is this guy?” What have I done?” If you don’t have the answer to those questions that is based in the guy’s character, you are screwed because without the tingle there’s nothing left. If you have some good answers, then love sort of cycles around again in a somewhat different, mature form.

I’ve gone through this myself. Around the three year mark, the infatuation did indeed wear off, and there was a period in which I felt I was no longer head over heels about my husband. However the answer to “Who is this guy?” wasn’t “He’s a sparkly vampire.” It was “He’s the guy who takes care of me when I’m sick, who still loves me when I’m puking, who treats me fairly, who has the fortitude to overcome the BS life throws at us, etc. That’s real love. That’s character. And guys like that tend to be beta. That’s why you can jump at the “immediate, head over heels” crap, you see in the movies.

Yep, so true, J. The man has to have character, and the relationship has to have a strong friendship underlying the romance. I think a really good question to ask yourself of a potential spouse is: “Would I want to be friends with a person like this even if I felt zero attraction to him?” If not, the relationship is on shaky ground when the feelings of excitement fade.

The “bells will ring” advice has got to go–we need to teach young people, especially women, that it is worthwhile to get to know men of high character, and bells do not have to ring immediately. They have to ring at some point, to some degree, but they should not be quick to reject the high quality men who only give them warm feelings at first, rather than fireworks.

You alluded to something else above that it seems many men don’t get. Women do not just hang out/sleep with alphas, knowingly investing in relationships that will go nowhere, planning to eventually settle with a beta for material provision. At least I didn’t. No, it’s just that without proper guidance, women will follow their feelings–and genuinely hope these relationships will work out. They have to learn from their mistakes, and through trial and error, learn what makes a relationship work and a man worth marrying. Since many Christian women don’t date all that much, it can takes years to learn these things through trial and error. Since women can support themselves, this “illumination” tends to come when they are ready to have kids, not as in the past, when they were ready to leave their parents’ house.

Far too many women relegate their husbands to the back burner as soon as they become mothers. The more you do that, the easier it is for the idea that parenting is your most important role to take hold. It’s easier to rationalize divorce when one has bought into the nonsensical notion that personal happiness 24/7 will makes you a better parent.

It seems to me that what happens is the mother essentially becomes “married” to the children. She loves, honors and even obeys the children. But children grow up and are to move on into the world, a marriage is supposed to last longer than 5 years. Ideally, a man and woman would marry, have children, and after the children leave home the man and woman would continue to be husband and wife. Obsessively being “mom” all the time essentially abandons the office of “wife”.

If that happens, the man will no longer feel so beholden to be “husband”. A man who feels no longer needed, or wanted, will find it difficult to resist the temptations of women who are seeing him as a man, rather than a roommate. Down that road one finds a number of things, most of them bad.

People forget that the greatest gift they can give your kids is the stability of an intact family where they can thrive and grow as individuals. Additionally, parenting is a job I would never want to tackle alone!

I’ve seen it stated elsewhere that if there was some kind of disease that does to children what divorce / single mother does, in terms of increased likelihood of major life-degrading things (increased likelihood of drug use, early alcohol abuse, sexual intercourse, etc.) we’d all be up in arms demanding a vaccine. There is a vaccine for many of these social ills: a stable home with a father and a mother. Too bad that our culture pays only lip service to that “vaccine”, while making it more and more difficult.

I think the problem is far too many people (especially women) get it backwards. They will marry when not in love, and divorce if the feel love is lacking. They should instead only marry if truly in love, but not feel entitled to always feeling this way when married. Hopefully they will, but this sense of entitlement is a problem in my view, and ironically leads for several reasons to falling out of love. Quite a paradox.

I know you feel that way, and I think that you are articulating what underlays the carousel meme in a very sensible way. Men feel the women are out there having their fun and then, when they are old and used up, they grab the first available guy, love him or not. I can understand that fear and would hate that to happen to my sons, but from the woman’s side, it really is more like what Julie and I have described. Women just don’t know the score until after a few kicks in the teeth. You and the manosphere blame feminism; I blame the abandonment of values.

The problem is that no one really knows what to look for when looking for love. No one knows what love really is; male and female, most of us think it’s infatuation–chubs and tingles. In the current SMP, the lucky among us finally find someone who is coincidentally of compatible character AFTER going through a bunch of people who excite us. We all have it backwards. We should all look for the “hottest” among the just and righteous instead of trying to make decent spouses of sluts and players. Telling us that attraction comes first is a huge failure of our culture.

OTOH, I know you sometimes see me as a Pollyanna who thinks that “it’ll all turn out fine.” But, take alook around you, D. Look at who is reproducing and who isn’t. Who has more kids, Roissy or Jim Duggar? When I see huge families of conservative Christians and Orthodox Jews, I feel pretty sure that the meek and beta are inheriting the earth. (To be more serious, I doubt we will ever live in a 50% Amish, 50% Hasisdic world. But I do think that the pendulum will swing back to a far more conservative mindset once Roissy and the DC bar sluts are out of the picture.

@JI know you feel that way, and I think that you are articulating what underlays the carousel meme in a very sensible way. Men feel the women are out there having their fun and then, when they are old and used up, they grab the first available guy, love him or not. I can understand that fear and would hate that to happen to my sons, but from the woman’s side, it really is more like what Julie and I have described. Women just don’t know the score until after a few kicks in the teeth.

Like I’ve said before, I only mention the woman marrying men they don’t love because my wife has witnessed it first hand. This is why I say head over heels. I take a pragmatic view on marriage much like what you are saying, but this I think maybe I love him, so lets get married and if it doesn’t work out I’ll take his money and devastate my kids strategy is ruining our society. If women don’t know, they need to own that problem. Sorry, it doesn’t work any other way. And if I sound like a dad and a project manager, guilty as charged. But really there is no other way. And guys need to be on a sharp lookout for it. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give women clearer advice as you and Julie are advising. In fact, the advice won’t have any meaning unless we make it clear they are responsible for the results of their choices. Easy divorce and blaming everyone else is cruelty wrapped as kindness from this perspective.

You and the manosphere blame feminism; I blame the abandonment of values.

I fear a headache if you try to reply, but is there really a distinction?

I can definitely relate to your cousin! Since we’re w/out kids yet my husband and I have a very intense relationship. Not in a creepy way, we just really enjoy being around each other. He does fear that children will take me away from all the doting I do on him, and I assume he’s right about that to an extent. Little kids require a lot of work. I am happy to hear that things revert back to normal when the kids are grown.

But, take alook around you, D. Look at who is reproducing and who isn’t. Who has more kids, Roissy or Jim Duggar? When I see huge families of conservative Christians and Orthodox Jews, I feel pretty sure that the meek and beta are inheriting the earth.

You hit a key point here and it’s something I think about when I dare every so often to read manosphere blogs written by unmarried, childless men. I tend to skip them altogether because they generally have nothing good to say not only about women, but also minorities and religious folk and I fit into all of those categories. Whatever they want to say however, the fact is that the only way to salvage what it left of American culture is for those of us who value it to marry, reproduce, preferably more than the 2.1 kids required to simply replace the parents who bore them.

Long live the Duggars and other families like them!

@Dream Puppy:

I want to second Dalrock’s thoughts about kids and their effect on a relationship. They only take away from it if you let them. My husband and I are still very close and our relationship is very intense even after 6 kids (he had one when I married him) and 16 years of marriage. We’ve made our marriage a priority and it has paid off for us and for our children.

He does fear that children will take me away from all the doting I do on him, and I assume he’s right about that to an extent. Little kids require a lot of work. I am happy to hear that things revert back to normal when the kids are grown.

LOL. It depends on what you mean by dote and normal.😉

When my older son was about 6 months old, I asked my husband, “When are we getting back to normal?” He looked at me bleary-eyed and said, “J, I think THIS is our new normal. This is what we signed up for.”

If by dote, you mean that you treat your husband as though he is taking the place a baby would in your life, no he will never have that again. You’ll be too busy to give him that and you will resent him wanting it. OTOH, you will get to look at each other while standing over a crib and know that what you’ve given each other is priceless. You will get to fall exhausted into each other’s arms get you get home at 4:00 in the morning from the ER because your kid spiked a high fever out of nowhere. You will stand next to your husband in the park by the monkey bars, calling out “Be careful!” while your husband says, “Go higher, you can do it!” and when the kid looks back and forth in confusion, you and your husband will look into each others eyes and smile because you’ll know the kid needs to hear both messages. You will look at your kids and see the best parts of each other. It’s a whole new dimension of love.

Although I do think that the 19 the Duggars have is a bit too much of a good thing, I’d have had a larger family if I could have and do admire that the Duggar kids are uniformly decent kids. Given a choice of my kids’ hanging with the Duggar kids or some of the entitled little jerks in my neighborhood, I’d pick the Duggars. The Duggars’ principles are not exactly mine, but I admire people who have principles and live by them.

Yep, this post gave me chills too. It was as you say Dalrock, a man using woman-speak to describe his relationship. I work in an office full of women, and I almost never hear anything positive about husbands. Honestly, I’ve begun to feel that this emotion we commonly call ‘romantic love’ is male phenomona.

Perhaps men are just loving fools, and women are practical manipulators of men’s foolishness.

I notice in the bible, the husband is commanded to LOVE his wife. The wife is commanded to OBEY her husband. Interesting distinction eh? Apparently God didn’t bother to command women to do something outside of their capacity. I’m not religious, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t wisdom to be found there.

The way marriage is supposed to be is that that spouse always comes first even before your own family. Also the kids take second place to the spouse. But in the modern world of femminism you get what you have now. The only reason I am married is because I wanted kids. If technology allowed for an artificial womb I wouldn’t have a wife at all only 3 kids. Most men have learned over the past 30 to 40 years to see and understand their wifes as just another burden and liability. Women know that and are actually quite proud of it.